


On My Body, On My Brain

by orphan_account



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 10:19:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13121706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Take out andGame of Thrones, that’s what Rafael had decided.





	On My Body, On My Brain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MajorlyObsessed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorlyObsessed/gifts).



> I hope that this little fic is what you had in mind you requested this prompt! Enjoy and Merry Christmas, love. <3
> 
> Beta'ed by my homies and my loves, booyahfordhamlaw and xemopeachx.

Take out and _Game of Thrones_ , that’s what Rafael had decided.

A quiet night in, for Sonny to burrow into his side and whisper inaccuracies eagerly in his ear on the novels he’d started reading in high school.

It was a Sunday tradition because Sonny had asked for it to be; they’d missed the last episode anyways, caught up in an investigation rather than each other’s arms.

A missing child, it had been.

It hadn’t ended well.

Closeness and wine and greasy spring rolls would do Sonny good.

At the very least, he’d be warm, and whole, and safe, and that was all Rafael found himself wanting the longer he lived with Sonny close to his heart.

He unlocked the door to his apartment, plastic carry out bag in hand, contents knocking together against his knee; he already had his mind on a red he would set out to let breathe while he plated their food when he crossed through the door, finding himself in the pathway of a pair of discarded loafers a size too big to be ones he would’ve found on the rack in his own closet.

A weight seemed to release from behind his chest as he smiled, like water rushing from behind a dam — he’d been worried Sonny wouldn’t take advantage of his key, a new development, but the loafers by the door and the suit jacket folded neatly across the kitchen island said otherwise.

At the thought of Sonny waiting, his form hugged by sweats and draped across his bed, Rafael found himself with new resolve in his step. He hurried to rid himself of the smell of grease, their dinner placed next to Sonny’s jacket on the island, the cork popped on the bottle of wine Rafael normally kept cool for Sunday dinner. Scotch usually found itself as his loyal companion during the week, but now, with Sonny likely soft-eyed and hazy from exhaustion, the hard liquor was better kept stored away.

He poured them both a healthy allowance of red before stepping into the hallway, glasses in hand and searching for the man who’d left his office that afternoon looking haunted.

The first stop was the bedroom, Rafael expecting to turn the corner and find Sonny bare-chested and twisted into the depths of his lavender sheets; the comforter was tucked neatly into its four corners, though, just as he’d left it that morning, and instead of the glow of the bedside lamp the crack in the door leading to the master bath glowed orange in the apartment’s fading light.

He moved forward, toeing the door open wider and slipping past the frame, careful of the alcohol in his hands.

He stopped short of placing the glasses on the counter when his eyes found long inches of pale skin, and his heart leapt to catch in his throat. 

 _Sonny_.

His Sonny.

He was so beautiful, and he’d made himself at home.

Spread out and bare, long legs taking up the length of the tub, Rafael was sure, even though the majority of him was hidden by frothing bubbles.

Rafael would’ve thought he were asleep if not for the sigh he breathed out, delicate neck rolling forward and back, and sending an arch down his shoulders and spine.

Rafael wanted to taste the length of him, from ribs to the creases where thighs met narrow hips.

He wanted Sonny to take him into his body, to kiss him soft and open-mouthed.

He wanted to feel Sonny from the inside, to know the joy that arrived and threatened to have him overflowing each and every time he was the one to hold Sonny through his release.

That was secondary, though, to making sure that Sonny wasn’t still hurting.

Rafael’s steps were quiet as he scaled the space between the door and the tub, but nothing could soften the brittle sound of his knees as he bent to lower a glass to Sonny’s side, to lower himself to the other man’s level.

Not that he wanted to remain completely unheard, of course — deep valleys formed in Sonny’s cheeks as soon as the first _pop_ was heard in the stillness of the bathroom, and with the slowness of his full-bodied warmth, he turned to slowly open his eyes and regard Rafael.

Middle-age aches were worth it if it meant coming home to that face, if it meant witnessing that face in all of its pink-cheeked glory; if it meant the smile that overtook that gorgeous face all because Rafael had announced his arrival in the familiar creak of his knees.

“Hey,” Sonny whispered, the most Rafael had heard him speak since even before the long hours ago in his office.

Cases dealing with children had always hit Sonny harder, and Rafael knew that his partner needed time to shed his skin after each one had met its end; time to soften the images in his mind, the ones that always led back to Tom Cole and a farmhouse, to a scared little boy or little girl behind his back instead of the cries of Evie Barnes, to a reminder of the cool press of metal that Rafael would never stop trying to chase away with his lips.

Sometimes it was with church, sometimes it was with a visit to Rollins’s apartment, to which Rafael never resented him, knowing he could never fully comprehend what it meant to discover the body of a child beyond the barrier of photographs, never in the same way that Sonny’s partner could.

Tonight, though, it was with the intimacy of Rafael’s apartment, with the scent of jasmine soaking into his skin, with the groan of Rafael’s knees on their descent down to meet him, and Rafael would grasp that privilege tight in between his fingers and never let go.

“Hey,” he whispered back, nudging the wine glass towards Sonny’s flattened palm. He wasn’t satisfied until the other man gripped the glass and brought it to his lips, until he’d watched the liquid travel down the long column of his throat — only then did Rafael allow the tips of his fingers to skirt across Sonny’s cheek, to trace the gentle angle of his jaw, to stay when Sonny leaned into his touch.

“How are you?”

Sonny’s slim shoulders lifted up slightly, a small shrug before his back was resting once more against the pale tile of Rafael’s bathroom walls.

“I can’t say I haven’t been better,” he started, a sigh leaving his damp chest. “It’ll go away in a couple days, though. You don’t gotta worry about me.”

“It” being Sonny’s nightmares, and they’d “go away in a couple days” Rafael’s ass, though he decided not to mention that.

Instead, he leaned forward on his socked toes, and snatched Sonny’s empty wine glass from in between his fist, twisting to put it and his own on the marble counter behind them. With free hands, he turned, and framed Sonny’s face, capturing the expanse of the soft smile he still wore in between fingers and palms.

“Well, luckily for you, I worry about you preemptively. That way, when you look at me like you are now, like you’re trying to get away with something, I already have my plan of action decided.”

It was said softly, but pointedly, directed at the eyes that had first held his heart, their bright blue and the lashes that Sonny peered through to meet his gaze. It was the look the other man wore when he was trying to be sweet, trying to convince Rafael of sex in his office or one more page of the novels they’d pick out together, the novels that Rafael would read aloud in a voice just low enough for Sonny to know he was there when the nightmares brought him back to the reality of thin sheets and their tangled limbs.

It was all Sonny ever really needed — Rafael’s voice beside him, Rafael’s hand heavy in the mess that was his bedhead.

More was needed this time, though, to blur the lines between reality and a world in which Sonny could find escape.

“What did you have in mind?”

Two hands grasped Rafael’s wrists then, soapy and slippery and gentle in the same way that Sonny’s tone had turned, a matching set to the shy grin Rafael’s thumbs found themselves enclosing.

“Greasy take-out,” he murmured, twisting long fingers to hold Sonny’s own and bring wet knuckles close to his lips, “the couch, and an outrageously long list of recordings. It’s a proven treatment for stress, a psychiatrist friend recommended it to me.”

He kissed Sonny’s skin without hesitation, lips grazing water droplets and the sharp peak of knuckles, red cuts marring his flesh, an after effect of chasing the man who’d snatched a four-year-old girl from the haven of a schoolyard jungle gym.

Rafael kissed every scrape, memorizing the shape of each underneath his lips, mouth lingering on Sonny’s thumb, where the cuts ran the deepest —he couldn’t keep Sonny from feeling so fully, but he’d lessen the sting with every part of him that he could.

When he finally pulled back, Sonny’s eyes on him were so full that Rafael knew he’d never feel empty again.

“Oh, yeah? What’s his name?” Sonny asked, so quietly into the stillness frozen between them.

Rafael shrugged, Sonny’s fingers loose in his grip. He played with them, separated them, traced their delicate length with his own.

“He went to Harvard, studied law. Read some psychology textbooks during his undergrad days.”

He was about to begin tracing the surface of one of Sonny’s palms with the flat of his thumb when fingers moved forward, curling underneath his chin. They tilted his head upwards until his vision was full of blue, and soft dimples puckering the skin he so badly wanted to worship.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Sonny’s fingers ran from Rafael’s jaw to his cheek, to the back of his head where his hairs ran short and Sonny could grip and pull him closer. He surged forward before Sonny could complete the movement, off-balance and eager, palms trying for purchase on the tub’s rim — cool coordination was inconsequential, though, once he’d begun to revel in the bliss that was Sonny’s mouth opening so easily to his.

Rafael could hear the water sloshing as Sonny made to pull him closer, could feel the shock of warmth as suds splashed against the ceramic and soaked through the middle of his shirt; but then there were Sonny’s hands, cool and damp, against his cheek and in his hair, and all sensations but the tenderness that kept his lips parted fell away.

 _Sonny_.

Anything and everything that was Sonny.

Rafael had never feared getting lost in him, and as jasmine and the feel of warm water faded, only Sonny’s words, mumbled against tongue and teeth found him.

“Can dinner wait?”

His blue eyes were hazy as his hand found Rafael’s wrist, still solid on the tub’s rim, moving to lower it slowly into the warm water pooled near his waist. Lower, he took Rafael’s fingers, until they brushed against him, gentle, and he sighed, delicate neck arching as he pulled his bottom lip between his teeth.

Rafael was weak.

Weak for him, weak for his sigh, weak for the way he pushed, slippery, into Rafael’s grip — weak because he was Sonny, and he was Rafael, and the way in which they were allowed to touch and love each other never stopped feeling like a privilege.

It was all Rafael could do to push upwards onto his knees, to lean across the large expanse of the tub, to fit his mouth around Sonny’s lower lip and moan when Sonny pushed slim hips into his hand again, bringing him closer with soapy fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck.

They stayed like that for long minutes, Rafael losing himself in Sonny’s tongue, in the fullness of his lips as he opened his mouth to let Rafael in again and again; in Sonny thrusting into his hand, so warm, and hard, and _perfect_ , in the sighs he felt at the back of his throat every time he squeezed or twisted his palm just right.

Eventually, though, necessity won out — his knees were aching, his dress shirt was splashed to ruin, and this wasn’t how he wanted Sonny to find his end, not tonight.

Not when they were ten feet from his bed and Rafael had a promise he intended to keep.

“Stand up for me,” he whispered, a final kiss sucked to the peak of Sonny’s chin as he loosened his grip underwater, and stood.

He could blame the way his legs went weak on the throbbing, fading but present, that he felt in the fronts of his knees; on the haze of longing, persistent, so fully present in both his mind and in the pressure he felt against the zipper of his slacks.

But it was all for Sonny, just as it had always been.

Just as it had been since their very first night, when Rafael had taken him on his living room floor; when he’d pushed into Sonny, and for hours underneath him, the only word that had left the other man’s lips was _“yes”_.

 _“Yes, Rafael”_ , and _“god, yes”_ , and _“deeper, yes”,_ gasped out with his head thrown back _,_ and Rafael had known, looking down at him, his chest heavy with the realization, that every movement, every pounding of his heart, every brush of lips against fair skin would be a choice made with Sonny first in heart.

It would always be all for him.

Then, and now, and until only the uncertainty of forever could pull them apart.

The moment he straightened from the tub, long limbs and flushed skin, Rafael reached to touch and tug on narrow hips. He needed to align their bodies, to breathe the same air, to feel uncovered flesh — only Sonny’s stumbling to scale the tub’s rim brought separation to their lips once they’d found each other again, a hindrance remedied quickly by Rafael’s fingers dug into his waist.

There were so many things he’d taken for granted in past loves.

The fullness of lips against lips, of wetness and soft, of the knowledge of what it felt like to lean forward, and know, that you’d find your missing half in another’s breath.

The solidness of hips and bones, of another’s entire self, of the joy that arrived at discovering patches of unexplored skin.

The brushing of noses against the planes of another’s cheeks when sucking kisses like air.

The simplicity of sensation, wasted, until it was Sonny he’d found in his arms.

Rafael was grateful.

No other love could have felt like this.

Even knobby elbows interlocked at the nape of his neck kept Rafael wanting always.

A want he would fulfill tonight, in even the shortest of seconds.

Five steps past the bathroom door and Rafael lowered Sonny to the bed, tongue retreating from in between pink lips as he straightened fully. Sonny bit his lip, and watched, as Rafael began parting the halves of his shirt; by the time ivory fabric had slipped past the muscle of his biceps, Sonny’s hand had wrapped around himself again, and Rafael groaned at the thought that his form was getting Sonny off.

 _“God,”_ he breathed out, stepping closer, in between spread, pale thighs.

He was a vision — a _dream_.

Blue eyes eclipsed black, lean body colored over in a shock of blush; lips parted, waiting, when Rafael leaned forward once more, reclaiming his breath and mouth as his.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered out, in between kisses that were wet, desperate tongues and the sweetness of wine finding the seams of each other’s lips. Their foreheads knocked together and Rafael paused, the heavy weight of bliss settling into his spine as he glanced downwards.

Sonny’s hand, still pumping, from their kisses, his words — and he had absolutely no idea.

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” Rafael asked, his hand lowering to join Sonny’s touch.

Sonny gasped at the tighter grip, at their fingers releasing and flexing in tandem, the whites of his eyes exposed when lids fluttered open to meet Rafael’s hungry gaze. Rafael only saw blue in it all, his favorite shade, burned brightly to the backs of his eyelids — blue that kept him going, pumping faster, whispering praises deep into Sonny’s neck.

“You lay here and you touch yourself because you see my body, you see me take off my shirt. But if only you knew. If you knew that you make me fucking _weak_ , that I’m falling over myself, over you, every day, because _you_ are my weakness. If only you knew, then you'd see.”

His final word was a whisper, a breath that had barely taken form when Sonny’s hands reached, urgent, for the space between fabric and flesh. His fingers stuttered like his hips did, scratching for purchase on the expensive shade of black — only when he whined, needy, frustrated nails digging into the curve of Rafael’s ass did Rafael chuckle into the soft slope of his neck and take pity.

He reared back from the bed, away from downy fabric and the familiarity of Sonny’s body underneath his, grinning as the other man took stumbling movements to lay himself in the center of the comforter. He watched as Sonny’s hands shook at the first nudge of his zipper downwards, as the feel of cotton curled between his toes; as he fought with nails and teeth, deep into fabric and the fullness of his plush lower lip, not to trace the line of his thigh and enjoy Rafael’s naked form with the pressure of his own hand.

When Rafael rejoined Sonny on the bed, he choked back his laughter as bony hips flew upwards and down; Sonny reached for the lube, sat out and discarded from the night before spent on the kitchen table rather than himself, and Rafael rewarded him with the full force of his weight.

“If you knew what you did to me, then you'd see that every single thing I do is because of you,” he finished, mouthed into Sonny’s chin.

He realized the declaration with a quick thrust and was rewarded with the perfection of Sonny’s form locking around his.

Finding each other’s lips again was like finding air — simple, quick, a movement borne of second nature; the simplicity of moving against each other, of sharing space was deafening.

Rafael was willing to spend forever in Sonny’s shape, in the pull of heat, in the nip of teeth, if it meant that they’d always be able to touch like this.

“Your mouth,” Sonny whispered, chin tilting and tongue flicking to meet the backs of his teeth, eyelids fluttering with the closeness the movement brought them, breath hot on mouth and lips.

Rafael’s head swam watching him, the whole of anything and everything that he was — how he arched into Rafael’s kiss, into the undulation of their hips, into the way Rafael’s nose traced long patterns down the lean length of his neck.

How blue eyes rolled to meet lids as Rafael found his pulse, and stayed, sucking soft flesh into the suction of his mouth until it was bruised over, a cornucopia of violent purple he knew Sonny would press a thumb into the following morning to remind himself of where he’d been.

How thin fingers brought their bodies close, fit themselves in between slick skin and shoulder blades, along the curve of Rafael’s ass.

How his body ached for the weight of Rafael’s own, how his spine curved from neck to hips, to the waist where their shared pleasure met and Sonny’s back left the bed, if only to revel in and find the closeness that had always so easily tangled itself between the sharing of their limbs.

And _his voice_.

Rafael wanted more of it.

Always more.

“Where, love?” he murmured, kisses following Sonny’s hairline, silver and wheat underneath his lips ending at the soft spot hidden behind an earlobe.

He kissed there, too, tender presses of lips, tongue, and wet, and reverent for the man underneath him. He kissed until Sonny found his voice, breathy and at the back of this throat, and everything that Rafael never wanted to stop saying _yes_ to.

“I want…” Sonny breathed, words faltering as his mouth opened to fit itself around a sigh, long and tipped back with a roll of his neck.

“I want— _God_ —I want...I want my chest. Rafi, I want my chest.”

Rafael chuckled, turned the sound into a final brush of lips, and moved to leverage himself over top of Sonny’s slender body, all softness and peach fuzz, large palms coming to bracket narrow shoulders.

The new angle allowed him to go slower, to thrust up against Sonny in a way that was the promise of more, of firm rolls of hips, of deeper and harder and from the inside once Rafael had worshipped what existed beneath him, pink-skinned and the image of gorgeous bliss.

“I think I can oblige,” he whispered, and pulled the flat of a thumb between lips, into wet heat.

Blue eyes blown black watched him, watched the line of him as mouth and finger separated and came to rest, damp, on the peak of a pink nipple. One touch had Sonny keening, arching his back, a desperate hunt for more pressure; one circle had Rafael palming himself, heavy between thick thighs, as Sonny begged for the release of his mouth.

“ _Please_ , Rafael, please, I can’t...I can’t, just suck my nipples, please, wanna feel your mouth, wanna feel you, _please_.”

His legs fell open on the last word, an exclamation to the prayer his body and voice had given desperate form to, and the image was holy in the only way that Rafael had ever understood.

“You want me to open you up, too?” he murmured, circling harder with every jolt of arousal coursing through Sonny’s limbs —his lip, sucked in between teeth before he released the kiss-bitten soft flesh, letting his neck and throat curve, and gasping, when Rafael sucked bruises to their pale length; his head, turning and finding the scent of Rafael’s pillow, relishing in the firm jerk it and the attention being paid to his chest brought to his hips.

Sonny, almost ruined, by deep grinding and Rafael’s wet thumb on his chest; Rafael ached to let his fingers trail lower, to devastate him from the inside.

“Come on, let me open you up,” he moaned, finally trailing his nose over the patch of flesh where Sonny wanted him the most. Lube was an afterthought, found blindly with fingers, only opened when Rafael pulled one of Sonny’s nipples between tongue and lips.

One suck and tense thighs fell open wider, a movement Rafael heard and felt — a whine, reverberated against the bedroom walls, buzzed from in between Sonny’s ribs and to his mouth; easier access for the finger he’d gotten slick, inserted until his rough knuckle disappeared inside of Sonny’s body.

“Always so open for me, so warm,” Rafael breathed, lapping wetly down Sonny’s sternum, across his chest, until his lips found the solid peak of the opposite nipple, left neglected to the cool night air. He paid it the same motions, the same reverential kiss — a kiss that had Sonny breathing heavily, a kiss that teased the further pressure of his mouth, a kiss that had thin fingers wound into the dampness of his hair.

Rafael added another finger as he began to suck, grinning in pleasure against blush-torn skin when Sonny bore down on the digits curling into the deepest parts of himself.

Hips writhed upwards, shifted side-to-side on the bed, and Rafael recognized the movement — Sonny wanted him deeper, wanted _more_ , wanted strokes from the inside that offered uninhibited bliss, and would lay, taking himself on Rafael’s fingers if it meant getting that.

His eyes opened, a heavy-lidded plea, an angel that was Rafael’s everything and end: “C’mon, Rafael, please, gimme another. I need it, need more of you inside me, _please_.”

 _God_.

From his toes to the pits of his stomach, lust coiled itself so thoroughly around his form that Rafael felt drunk with it. He added another finger hurriedly, Sonny’s favorite number buried inside, and caught the gasp created with his words and his mouth.

“Is this all for me? You moving like this, you taking my fingers like you are? Would you want this so badly with anyone else?”

Sonny caught his lower lip between teeth, sucking until he had it fully against his tongue, clenching around the fingers Rafael curled.

“No, it's you,” he panted, heavy against Rafael’s cheek. “I know it's ‘cause it's you. ‘Cause I love you, and you love me, and this always feels so perfect ‘cause it’s us.”

“It does,” Rafael answered, kissing him soundly, kissing him through the removal of fingers, kissing him and swallowing protests.

With their foreheads touching, chests touching, hearts pounding in tandem, Sonny’s blue eyes wide and only for him, another moment couldn't have him feeling more.

No other world, no other universe.

No other space, no other second could exist.

No other point in his life could Rafael feel his weakness, his strength, derived from another’s gaze.

No other point where he could render himself so vulnerable, to hold another’s naked body close and speak into their skin the things he so adored.

No other point where he could feel his chest heaving, heavy, with the strength of his love for the man who had come to hold his heart completely.

Those seconds, those moments, those hours only existed in the spaces in which he and Sonny created them.

And as he pushed into Sonny slowly, it was another one made perfect.

“Ahh,” Sonny breathed, as soon as he'd settled fully, and it was that one gorgeous noise that spurred Rafael’s first thrust.

“Ahh” in his ear, over and over as he snapped his hips, as knobby knees and elbows locked his body in place, “ahh” as he gripped Sonny’s waist and dipped thumbs into the curve of hipbones.

Long minutes of those little gasps, of the tight heat that was Sonny’s body had Rafael’s abs flexing, arousal pounding like waves through his veins — when Sonny sighed, knocked his heels against Rafael’s lower back, tugged, and said, “need you deeper, Rafi”, he had to grind his teeth, hard, to keep from coming.

Without another thought, he rolled his hips harder, pounding, wanting Sonny shrouded in nothing but their shared bliss — wanting Sonny to feel his presence when he walked tomorrow, a reminder of being connected body and soul.

“This is why I love being inside of you,” he finally said, the words spilling forth with every contented little moan, every flutter of lashes against blush-strewn cheekbones. Sonny’s face, so beautiful in pleasure, was all he saw, all he wanted to see — tonight, and in the early morning sun, and for the entirety of both of their lives.

“When I'm inside of you, I can make you see. Make you understand. That you’re the why, Sonny. The because. The 'why I fight so hard, every day', the 'I'm happy because of'. And maybe, when I give you all of myself this way, you'll understand that I will spend every day, of how long you'll have me, thanking you for it.”

And with one thrust more, Sonny came.

Untouched, moaning, perfect pink lips parted, hips pumping through it as he clenched around Rafael, tight.

He was the most beautiful picture that Rafael had ever seen.

Their bodies held no separation, but he could feel it.

The heat of Sonny’s cheeks, blown red, burning against his open mouth; the fingers that Rafael had kissed, damp in the bath, holding tightly to the thick muscle of his shoulder blades.

The fact that it was his words instead of his body, sweetness instead of lust that had Sonny undone had Rafael following behind him.

Three pulses of his hips, long and deep, and he stayed stock-still, filling Sonny with his release and carding gentle knuckles through his hair as he held their mouths open to one another through the length it took to spill himself empty.

Their chests were heavy against one another as they laid, still tangled, Sonny content to clasp his ankles tight across Rafael’s back and lock him in place.

A chuckle left Rafael’s belly at the movement, the spaces between his fingers full of the fluff of Sonny’s perpetually-damp hair. He nosed along his cheekbone, still slick with sweat, kissed saltiness and brought his lips to the shell of Sonny’s ear.

“You have to let me get up, love. I'll clean us up, maybe re-heat some of that Chinese that's gone cold?”

Reluctantly, his limbs loosened, knees dropped and spread wide to the bed. When Rafael pulled out, he did so with palms stretched across lean thighs and kisses to their insides that would leave marks come morning.

Rafael found a rag quickly, discarded at the base of the tub from Sonny’s earlier bath; a bowl, taken from Rafael’s china collection for the explicit purpose, filled halfway with warm water from the sink.

And when he re-entered the bedroom, his heart settled, content, somewhere in the center of his chest.

There Sonny lay, his and taken.

He'd already rearranged his limbs, his head laid on his usual pillow, a hand resting loose across his chest. Rafael joined him on the opposite side of the bed, smiling warmly when dimples shown in flushed cheeks at the first flicker of their eyes meeting one another’s.

“Move your hand,” he coaxed, gently, a hand steadying the bowl between them as he gripped the washcloth in fingers and wet it, guiding it across the flat of Sonny’s stomach.

He paid careful attention to wipe him clean, scrubbing until no more white shown and his earlier bath was apparent.

The rag was discarded then, the water dirty, the bowl placed next to them on Rafael’s nightstand — he moved, to step towards the bathroom, the kitchen, to dump the water and re-set their food on plates so that he and Sonny could enjoy dinner from the warmth and closeness of his bed.

His back was turned when thin fingers rushed to grab at his wrist, and when he turned and found the wide-eyed sweetness of Sonny’s face, his heart pulled him once more to the center of the bed.

“Come here,” he motioned, shoulders settling against the smooth panels of his headboard, sheets pooled thin around his waist. Sonny had already cocooned his own body underneath them, and found the strong expanse of Rafael’s chest easily.

Rafael kissed his head, breathed the scent of him in, natural and unmasked from sex. Sonny’s nose rested in his favorite spot, where heat pooled at the curve of Rafael’s shoulder, and met neck.

It was natural, as if his form were crafted with the shape of Sonny in mind — Sonny would always find a place to rest there, so long as he sought it out.

When long breaths passed between them, Rafael’s thumb tracing the line of his spine, he figured Sonny asleep. There was a shift against his belly, though, Sonny’s hand resting flat to turn blue eyes upwards towards him.

“Did you mean all that?”

Rafael took the words in, his brows furrowing until Sonny continued.

“You know, what you said. Before I had, like...what was _easily_ the best orgasm ever.”

He knew Sonny’s words were meant to tease, to prod, the ease the tension that Rafael knew was etched in deep lines across his face.

But it wasn't enough, because how could Sonny not see?

How could he not see what Rafael had fallen over himself to make apparent since that very first night, rushed and scattered limbs on the roughness of his living room carpet?

He took Sonny’s face in hand, cupped cheek and jaw and chin; they were close enough that he could feel Sonny’s heart flitting wildly from the intimacy of their shared space alone, and it gave him new strength.

“I don't ever say anything I don't mean. Don’t you know that by now? I meant every word of it. When I found you, it…” he trailed off, searching for the answer in Sonny’s blue — he'd always found it so easily there.

“It gave me resolve. Another reason to get up every day. I love my work, Sonny, I really do. But this? This thing that I never thought I'd have? It's my why. You are my why. And I don't think I can ever give enough of myself to you to show you what that means to me.”

Sonny’s hand covered his, then, and Rafael pretended not to notice the wet on his cheeks. He couldn't deny it, though, when their lips were pressed together and Sonny held him close.

“You do, Rafi, okay? Promise,” he breathed, laughing quietly at the word’s end when Rafael’s thumbed at his lashes, and caught tears before they fell over the brims of his eyes. “I can't think of some equally romantic shit like all that, but just...just know for me, please? You do. You show me every day, I swear you do.”

“Okay,” Rafael nodded, and tugged him back down close, to lay over the place where he belonged. Prompting wasn't necessary, though, because Sonny’s ear fell to his heart easily.

If Sonny were only to remember one thing, Rafael hoped it would always be that much.

With their limbs halved, intertwining into the whole he knew they'd wake up in for long days to come, Rafael spoke quietly into Sonny’s hair.

“Tu eres mi razón. Siempre.”


End file.
